…to legislate surrender in Iraq?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that she will bring another troops-out-of-Iraq bill to the House floor on Friday.

It will be the 58th “politically motivated” bill on the Iraq war by the House and Senate this year, Republicans complained.

The Fifty Eighth!

Now, I may sound a bit partisan here, but repeated failure seems to be a recurring theme among the folks over there on the left side of the aisle. I mean, they embrace socialism… despite its extreme lack of success in every government that has adopted it over the years… and they want to force it on the rest of us, here in America, marketing it as “freebies” for all.

So this 58 business, while lending new meaning to the old adage “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”, is also somewhat embarrassing to me, as an American, despite the fact that it comes from the left, which is as indictable as El Nino once was in its own milieu, for all sorts of problems.

Foreign media report on our Congressional activities, simply because the United States is what it is in the world, and a Congress that spends most of its time trying to disrupt the CIC during a time when American troops are in harm’s way demeans the image of America and our political system (think all us voters, who put these people in office).

Fifty Eight failed attempts by the majority on the Hill to surrender to terrorism must make us look pretty lame.

“We are restating the differentiation between us and the president of the United States,” Pelosi said at a press conference. “This gives voice to the desires of the American people,” she said of the bill, which ties war funding ($50 billion for four months) to an immediate troop withdrawal.

Right, they are “re-stating” the differentiation, etc, etc…

Liberals will be liberals.

These are people who will sink in quicksand to protest an anti-quicksand policy and wonder, as they begin to smother (ooops! too late!), if it was a worthwhile cause.

However, I digress…

The 58 surrender attempts have all had one thing in common: They all happened on the taxpayer’s dime. What Pelosi blatantly admitted in that single short paragraph was that the Democrats have no problem with flogging a dead horse on our time and money to press a political agenda.

Try being as unproductive in a salaried private sector job and see how soon you encounter the need to edit your resume.

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) criticized Democrats for refusing to recognize the important of the U.S. military mission as well as the “tremendous progress we’ve made against all odds in capturing and killing agents of terror, and providing a level of security for political reconciliation to take place.

“This bill is deja-vu all over again,” Blunt said. “The last time Democrats tried to tie funding for our troops to a date for surrender, they failed - and that was before the marked turn-around we’ve witnessed on the ground over the past several months.”

Truncating…

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Iraq from every neighborhood of Baghdad, according to a top American general - “allowing American troops involved in the ’surge’ to depart as planned.”

Which brings us to this:

The upbeat assessment from the New York Times and other major newspapers had some Republicans questioning the Democrats’ timing:

Blunt said the House on Friday would be taking up a bill “that has far less to do with building on our continued progress, and far more to do with pandering to their (Democrats’) base.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a statement on Thursday questioning the continuing Democratic push for a troop withdrawal.

“What unfortunate timing for Democrats, announcing yet another attempt at a withdrawal date on a day when the papers are filled with encouraging news from Iraq,” McConnell said.

President Bush vetoed a bill tying war funding to a troop withdrawal in May, and he undoubtedly would do so again, given the chance. Some troops withdrawal bills, facing the prospect of a presidential veto, have not mustered enough support to pass the Senate.

So what it all boils down to is that the Democrats have so little regard for our tax dollars or for the Will Of The People that they’ve got absolutely no problem with wasting the time and the resources of the American People by squandering two years of a Congressional majority performing the Kiss of Shame on the far left.

Fifty Eight (count ‘em, 58!) attempts to surrender to the anti-thesis of our very civilization, “Paid for by the Democratic Party”.

…it’s that no matter what happens, any and every solution the Democrats will devise to any and every problem will be based upon raising taxes.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, is proposing a new carbon tax to reduce U.S. energy consumption. Part of the proceeds, he said would help pay for “universal health care — “upon passage,” he noted.

Dingell, here, wants not only to raise taxes, but also to create a new tax to pile on to those we already pay. A “carbon tax”.

But he’s not finished!

In addition to the carbon tax, Dingell’s plan to reduce global warming also includes higher taxes on gasoline; and a phase-out of the mortgage interest deduction on what he called “McMansions.”

If that’s not enough, he’s holding free reign on the as yet unproven concept of man-made global warming.

Yeah, yeah, we know — Dingleberry and his ilk ignore the scientists who employ actual science to refute the man-made “climate change” theories that are based totally upon politics rather than science, so…

“The earth is getting warmer and human activities are a large part of the cause,” Dingell said. “We need to act in order to prevent a serious problem.”

Dingell admits that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be a “massive undertaking,” but he believes higher taxes and fees are “the most effective way” to solve the problem.

Dingell said he would levy an additional 50-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, to be phased in over five years and then adjusted for inflation.

Boy, it must be nice to be able to simply pile on the taxes and restructure the Constitution at the same time. After all, the end result of this idiot’s agenda will be a socialist state to replace the present structure of the United States Government — Ding has already decided that socialized medicine is a done deal, so…

Where will the revenue go?

“First and foremost, the Earned Income Tax Credit will be expanded,” Dingell said on his website. He said the higher EIC (a tax refund for poor people who don’t pay taxes) will help lower income families compensate for the increased taxes on fuels.

Dingell said the money raised by the higher gasoline tax would go into a highway trust fund, with 40 percent going to mass transit and 60 percent going to roads. (The revenue from the tax on jet fuel would go into the airport and airway trust fund.)

Finally, Dingell said the revenue from his proposed fee on carbon emissions - the carbon tax - would go into the following accounts: Medicare and Social Security; Universal Healthcare (upon passage); State Children’s Health Insurance Program; Conservation
Renewable Energy Research and Development; Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

.

This is such a Democrat issue: Employ junk science as a basis for dumping large new tonnages of taxes on the American people while shoving our government in the direction of a political philosophy that is 180 degrees in opposition of the Law of the Land upon which our great and hitherto profoundly successful nation has been based from its founding.

To take things a step further, the politics advocated by the Democrats represent the cornerstones of those governments that have been our sworn enemies and collective anti-thesis over the last century.

Socialists. National Socialists. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

These folks simply don’t understand even the most fundamental reasons why we broke away from England in the latter part of the 1700s, why our great Constitution says what it says or why the United States of America is boss trump in the global arena.

We are.

Even when we read about the citizens of foreign countries opposing us via demonstrations and so forth, we can understand that the reason they’re bitching is that we’re the boss — we possess the factors that make any entity existing within the boundaries of humanity boss: We are both economically and militarily superior to the rest of the world. When America makes a move, it is felt across the globe. That’s the way it is.

We don’t simply sit on our riches and/or our military might, we share both. The Democrats find fault in the latter. They found fault in our protecting the South Vietnamese from communism and they find fault in our attempts to introduce democracy to the Arab world. They would prefer to surrender.

If the Democrats are so dedicated to the options of

a) living under Sha’aria law or

b) being beheaded

that’s their lookout.

If the Democrats are so dedicated to taxing us to death

that’s a good reason to vote otherwise

If the Democrats are so willing to transform us into a socialist country

that’s a spectacular reason to do away with their party.

‘Nuff said.

this is very definitely the way to go — as a state project, not a federal affair.

When Louis Brandeis praised the 50 states as “laboratories of democracy,” he didn’t claim that every policy experiment would work. So we hope the eyes of America will turn to Wisconsin, and the effort by Madison Democrats to make that “progressive” state a Petri dish for government-run health care.

This exercise is especially instructive, because it reveals where the “single-payer,” universal coverage folks end up. Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is “free” health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.

Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.

Talk about ruthless mathematics…

Given the trial and error (hit or miss?) process that seems to accompany the regular dose of Murphy’s Law whenever government descends and the inevitable resulting demand for additional funding via taxes collected from We, the People, I am reminded for some reason of dominoes.

In countries whose citizens “benefit” from socialized medicine, taxes are well beyond oppressive by American standards — and all too much of that is due to the cost of their government administrated health care.

By the time a healthy taxpayer is done being taxed, he/she will have been charged more of his/her hard earned pay by the government than it might have cost for a private HMO — or because he/she is in satisfactory or better physical condition, been, quite simply, ripped off: Perhaps he/she hasn’t felt the need for medical coverage just yet. But he/she must be protected whether he/she likes it or not.

Hmmm…that sounds awfully like a personal choice that belongs exclusively to said taxpayer, not unlike to wear or not to wear a motorcycle helmet, strap on a seat belt, order a blood-rare burger, etc, etc…

But it doesn’t strike me as anything the framers of the U.S. Constitution would have endorsed.

But…back to the issue at hand –

What we have here is a state experimenting with socialized medicine. While I brook none of that bullshit on a federal level, I am a fervent believer in states’ rights; If a collection of idiots living within the confines of their own political subdivision exercise their voting rights to elect leaders of the socialist persuasion, so be it. Look at California.

For that matter, look at what the left is trying to do in Wisconsin (damn, I’d love to deliver a “cheesy” pun, but who wants to kick a state when it be about to be “down”?).

Moving right along,

There’s absolutely no mystery why our greatest complaints are in the arena of government-delivered services and the fewest in market-delivered services. In the market, there are the ruthless forces of profit, loss and bankruptcy that make producers accountable to us. In the arena of government-delivered services, there’s no such accountability. For example, government schools can go for decades delivering low-quality services, and what’s the result? The people who manage it earn higher pay. It’s nearly impossible to fire the incompetents. And, taxpayers, who support the service, are given higher tax bills.

Oh — kay!

Before we buy into single-payer health care systems like Canada’s and the United Kingdom’s, we might want to do a bit of research. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute annually publishes “Waiting Your Turn.” Its 2006 edition gives waiting times, by treatments, from a person’s referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist. The shortest waiting time was for oncology (4.9 weeks). The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery (40.3 weeks), followed by plastic surgery (35.4 weeks) and neurosurgery (31.7 weeks).
As reported in the June 28 National Center for Policy Analysis’ “Daily Policy Digest,” Britain’s Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients waits more than a year for surgery. France’s failed health care system resulted in the deaths of 13,000 people, mostly of dehydration, during the heat spell of 2003. Hospitals stopped answering the phones, and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.

So now, we have problems on both the buy side and the sell side of government run healthcare.

Bummer.

I don’t think most Americans would like more socialized medicine in our country. By the way, I have absolutely no problem with people wanting socialism. My problem is when they want to drag me into it.

That has got to be the single most perfect definition of belief in the rights of Americans that I’ve ever seen. What happens to we believers in the Constitution once that great document has been violated and pissed upon by our very Congress?

The long and the short of it should be that we can thank our lucky stars that this entire exercise is as it should be, a single state event. The only problems I can envision there are the inevitably tragic probable results for Wisconsin taxpayers and what they would invite: FAILURE.

Failure attracts today’s liberal-ruled Democrats — while socialism has long since proven itself a blatant mistake, these so-called intellectual elites, followers of eco-socio-economic theories based solely on Utopian fantasies, want to repeat this same failure.

On the other hand, ownership of immense bureaucracies also attracts the Democrats, and the number of bureaucracies that would emanate from a parasitic healthcare core would constitute tax money negligently flushed down the commode of liberalism. So what’s new?

So the other day a whole bunch of Senators grew brains – (at least temporary ones) and finally got the picture – voting for the amnesty based immigration bill would very definitely have mandated the typing of their resumes before the end of autumn, 2008. A lot of credit goes to junior senators who thankfully opted to buck their more senior counterparts and do the right thing for their country, thus proving my theory that imposing term limits on members of Congress would constitute a much needed reform. So-called “junior” senators apparently still possess the principles that drove them to serve to begin with, whereas most of the “senior” ones have become part of the machine.

At any rate, they shot down the bill. We conservatives are both pleased and relieved. I had been really sure that amnesty would pass if for no other reason than that too many Republican Senators would be sold on the proactive additions to the bill, figuring they could use them to placate their anti-amnesty constituencies. After all, a politician’s only real career asset is the gift of gab. He or she can be as dumb as a post, but as long as his/her skills as a con man (or con woman) remain intact, he or she can continue to parasite off the taxpayer for decades.

But I digress (ahem).

Let’s see what happens next – the amnesty that centralized the bill was like a shark, while all the positive ad-on agendas like securing the border and enforcing work eligibility laws were like pilot fish clinging to the shark.

Unfortunately, these particular Naucrates ductor didn’t enjoy the option afforded other pilot fish of simply dropping off a dead shark’s teeth and going elsewhere, they shared the fate of the shark. Bummer.

Now, watch the amnesty mongers on the Hill interpret this to mean that all immigration issues are up for individual assessment or reassessment. Bush signed off on the border fence, but that was before the Democrats became the Congressional majority. Those critters could promise us the moon, then not fund the acquisition when the time comes, somehow blaming their failure to deliver on the Republicans, the liberal mainstream media making it believable to the folks on Maple Street. Since they didn’t promise the fence, starving the project of funding would be at most a picayune bit of intentional neglect.

Given the above, the entire illegal immigration issue can be brought forward, without definitive resolution, right through the 2008 election season, giving the Democrats something to “champion”, with their own patented brand of misleading spin, as a co-side dish to man made global warming “climate change”, alongside the hefty Iraq entrée.

I perceive this as a political misstep for the Democrats, as their immigration agendas are offensive to the majority of Americans. But they would tear flesh from bone to stifle the viewpoint of right thinking Americans and flood the field with their liberal propaganda.

On the other hand, the more they obfuscate and promote delays, the larger the criminal alien problem can grow. The M-19 gangs can expand their memberships and bloody influence, emergency rooms can continue to close, billions of dollars in untaxed wages can be wired out of the country and out of our economy, American tradesmen such as carpenters, masons, roofers, plumbers, painters and landscapers, as well as general laborers, custodial workers, furniture movers and others can go hungry along with their families while unscrupulous contractors replace them with illegal, dirt wage, benefit free illegals.

In short, our enthusiasm regarding the defeat of the amnesty bill should be tempered by concern as to how both Bush and the Democrat majority, neither of whom has exhibited any real interest in quelling the flow of criminal aliens into the U.S. (actually, quite the opposite), will now attempt to exploit whatever they can in its aftermath in order to perpetuate a continued increase in the problem as they drag it out in hopes of eventually seeing their amnesty agenda succeed via the pressure of continuous attrition.

Whenever I think I’ve seen it all over there on the left, something like this comes along.

H/T James Taranto.

…. will do so because, out of negligence, malevolence toward the right or simple ignorance , take your pick, they want for themselves and their fellow Americans what is on this list at Always On Watch.

According to such cartoon characters as Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, should they manage to get enough of their fellow travellers elected so as to have a majority in the House of Representatives, with Pelosi expected to become Speaker of the House (well, Halloween is almost upon us, so what’s a good scare among friends?), one of the first priorities of the Democrats will be to stamp out the Bush tax cuts and roll back our taxes to 1990s levels.

If I were an enemy of the state, I would utterly destroy my hands applauding this ambition. Unfortunately, I am a patriot who loves America, to say nothing of the fact that I am also an American who lives and pays taxes here, so I must convey the blatant fact that I am not a fan of this intended tax increase.

I understand the Democrats’ need to tax me into the ground. Well, not exactly understand it, per se, but I realize that the Democrats have a serious problem with their fellow Americans being able to keep some of the money they earn and are fixated on the concept of raising taxes whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Some people are into sky diving, some people collect butterflies, some people are passionate stamp collectors, some people love archery, some tennis, some throwing rocks at passing cars, some surfing porn websites, some collecting sea shells, some climbing trees, others mountains…. Democrats are into raising taxes. It’s what they do, just as sucking blood is what mosquitos do, or what leeches do.

It’s not their fault, it’s simply who they are.

They particularly like to tax those who are successful, like the rich and like large, prosperous corporations, and are very much like Robin Hood — they take from the rich, and give to the poor. It makes them feel good — hell, it makes them feel great — stripping a big company of its investment capital plunges them into ecstasy.

Back in the 1980s, during the Reagan Administration, the greatest President in my lifetime stopped the bloodsucking practice of penalizing American business for its success, allowing it to keep its investment capital in order to put it to work, and lo and behold, despite the Democrats’ criticism of what they fondly referred to as Reaganomics, our economy exploded into a dynamo of successful professionals, low unemployment, newly created millionaires and prosperous companies.

This trend continued through the Bush 1 Administration, but then, alas and alack, American voters sent Bill Clinton, a Democrat, off to the White House.

Keeping to the sacred tradition of Democrats, he raised taxes, as usual targeting the rich.

Before the end of his second term (he was actually reelected, go figure!), we were plunged into recession. The unemployment rate soared, businesses struggling to stay afloat transferred record amounts of their production to outsourced labor pools and after Algore, Clinton’s Veep, lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, the newly elected President engendered massive tax cuts.

Naturally the Democrats, dismayed that Americans were being permitted to keep more of their earnings, mounted yet another of their innumerable bumper-sticker friendly campaigns — “The Republicans have given tax cuts to the rich, screwing the poor as always!”

That was worth, at the very least, a good chuckle, since every American taxpayer was entitled to the cuts. The Democrats somehow managed, once realizing that they really couldn’t produce any low income working folks who were being either neglected or recieving the fid, cited poor people on welfare and other premature social security venues who weren’t benefiting from the tax cuts, the fact that these people didn’t pay any income tax to begin with notwithstanding… they actually forced the government to give something “back” to these noncontributors as well.

Meanwhile, the tax cuts enabled corporate America and smaller business people to use the “surplus” equity to expand existing business and create new enterprises.

The result has been a major rebound in our economy and a serious decrease in the unemployment rate that is still adjusting downward. America is again flourishing!

But let’s not be too confident, friends, okay? We still haven’t had this year’s elections, so we don’t actually know where we stand.

We’re pretty confident about holding a Republican majority in the Senate, but there has been a lot of negative conjecture regarding the House majority after 7 November. Personally, I believe we’ll hold our majority there, as well, though we’ll have a few less seats.

But…

Should the Democrats gain a majority in the House Of Representatives, they will raise taxes, and you can bet your bottom dollar, assuming you still have one, that the late 1990s recession will return even more quickly than it went away.

Of course, the Democrats will find a way to blame Bush….

What should we make of this…

Former president Bill Clinton praised Saddam Hussein’s lieutenants and their underlings on Tuesday, saying they were mostly “good” and “decent” people.”

and this…

Clinton offered praise for Saddam’s lieutenants during the same speech where he criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq as “a big mistake.”

…in view of this?

“Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors,” said Clinton.

Clinton also stated that, while other countries also had weapons of mass destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such weapons against his own people and against his neighbors.

Talk radio host Michael Graham, who was recently suspended from his job at WMAL radio, a subsidiary of ABC for making comments linking Islam with terrorism due to complaints from CAIR{Council on American-Islamic Relations} has now been fired.

It seems CAIR, not content with his suspension, kept up the pressure and the network gave in, axing one of their most popular hosts. CAIR, like many other Islamic organizations, does not make a policy of condemning terrorism. In fact, these folks even help arrested Muslim terrorists obtain legal counsel.

It appears that ABC Radio has caved to an organization that condemns talk radio hosts like me, but has never condemned Hamas, Hezbollah, and one that wouldn’t specifically condemn Al Qaeda for three months after 9/11.

Read the article, there are links therein that can be used to submit comments both to ABC and WMAL.  

When I was growing up back in the 1950s and 1960s, I, like most people, I suppose, never dreamed that our society would become like it is. There was always healthy competition between the Democrats and Republicans, but there was always a line of sorts that neither side crossed. People on both sides were proud of America and proud of our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Patriotism was fashionable, even among Democrats. Children were raised to respect authority figures like teachers and cops(though, during the Vietnam conflict, the peace movement deviated from that aspect of their upbringing), television left more intimate events to the imagination and produced great shows(better than what I saw more recently before I stopped watching it) and the news media had a better grasp on the meaning of the verb “report”. You felt you could trust what you read in the papers or heard on the evening news. People could say what they meant without having to couch their words in the obscurity of so-called ”political correctness”(PC is still a foreign concept for me, I still say exactly what I mean, using whatever words I feel best get my point across).

Today we seem to have gone 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

We have the Democrats, a party that, since being hijacked by liberals, has moved so far to the left that were the earth flat, they’d have all fallen off years ago, bashing their country at every opportunity under the guise of caring one way or the other about an issue; In reality, the current crop of Dems have demonstrated that they are more concerned with scoring political victories than with the economy, national security, the citizens’ rights they claim to champion or pretty much anything else they express an interest in.

They want to abolish God from any and all public properties, hiding behind a “separation of church and state” that doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution, yet insist on butt munching Muslims when it comes to Islamics’ religious rights, even those of incarcerated terrorists. Last year I read of a school in California where, though Jewish and Christian kids aren’t allowed to pray, all students were required to attend Koran classes and one day per week show up in Arab garb.   

Along with a news media that’s drifted far to the left, they presently focus all their energy fighting the War On Bush, crowing joyously out from behind facades of concern whenever we lose soldiers in Iraq, comparing our troops to Nazi storm troopers, Camp Delta to a gulag or a concentration camp, anything to discredit President George W. Bush and truth doesn’t even factor into the bargain. They obstruct Bush any way they can, fighting every appointment he makes to every agency and organization whether the candidate is good, bad or otherwise, their goal being to make the President fail. It doesn’t matter that such a failure might result in more 9/11s, Iraq falling to another bloody dictatorship after all the sacrifices of our brave military personnel and those of other coalition countries, or even Armageddon. All these traitors — that’s right, t-r-a-i-t-o-r-s, there’s no other word that so aptly describes these assholes — care about is their partisan politics and what’s really scary, on the order of the Dems getting the White House and/ or Congress somewhere in the future, is that while they lambast Bush over every move he makes, not one of them has any solutions to any of the problems that my President has thusfar addressed rather brilliantly. 

While the left has chanted their “Bush lied, people died” and “No blood for oil” slogans, we have seen two murderous Islamic dictatorships become democracies, the concept of democracy embraced in a couple of other Arab states and we have enjoyed tax cuts that allow us to keep more of our own money. We have seen the economy, measured in new jobs, begin to grow again and a homeland security structure bringing our various intelligence and security agencies into a cooperative loop and greatly decreasing the chances of more terrorist attacks. We have seen government programs enacted that are aimed at bringing our educational standards back to their former excellence.

This has been solely the work of the Bush Administration and the Republican party, despite incessant, aggressive obstructionism by the Democrats, the same people whose major contribution during the Clinton Administration was to make America appear weak in the eyes of the global terrorist organizations Bubba and his people should have been fighting. 

Today, while the Bush Administration fights the Global War On Terror, the Democrats fight their own war on the President.

The upside to all this is that as the Democrats become more and more vitriolic, and downright insulting to the intelligence of the voting public, they continue to drive away votes(not entirely, of course, they’ll always have dingbat California liberals and a faithful following of blue state boneheads to keep them from being shut out altogether), and the longer we can stave off a resurgence of power from the left side of the aisle the better off America, and the world, for that matter, will be.